


Upside Down

by Miss_Peletier



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Angst, F/M, Stranger Things AU, stranger things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-16 12:43:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12342930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Peletier/pseuds/Miss_Peletier
Summary: Typing Clarke Griffin's name onto the missing persons report, Marcus decided – with some reluctance – to bring down his bitterness a bit. His hatred of doctors aside, no parent deserved to lose a child. He could only imagine how the woman sitting before him was feeling right now. Even if her fears were unfounded.If there was one thing Chief of Police Marcus Kane knew for absolute certain, it was that nothing ever *happened* in Arkadia, Indiana._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Kabby Stranger Things AU.





	1. Chapter 1

“Where the hell were you, Kane?” she asked, glaring at him from across the wooden desk. Marcus could feel the heat in her gaze, waves of anger radiating from her like wisps of steam from his untouched coffee. Just his luck, he thought, that his Wednesday morning at the station should start with an interrogation from Doctor Abigail Griffin. “I’ve been waiting here for over an _hour_!”

He fought the urge to roll his eyes, willed his boiling blood down to a simmer. It wouldn’t do him, or her, any good if he snapped at her now; best, he thought, to get this over with, find her kid, and get on with it. He was Arkadia’s Chief of Police, after all – might as well do his job. Her presence was nothing a can of beer couldn’t erase later tonight.

“I apologize. _Again_ ,” he droned, keys clacking as he began with the key line Abby came here to solve: MISSING. She stiffened, the motion made her ponytail swish slightly, her lips pursed into a thin pink line. All things considered, he thought, it was a miracle she came to the police before running out into the wilderness herself.

There was an awkward silence filled only by the clacking of keys and the dull, indistinct chatter of the station, which drifted down the hallway and wafted through his door along with the scent of coffee. Typing her daughter’s name onto the paper, Marcus decided – with some reluctance – to bring down his bitterness a bit. His hatred of doctors aside, no parent deserved to lose a child. He could only imagine how the woman sitting before him was feeling right now. Even if her worries were unfounded.

If there was one thing Marcus Kane knew for certain, it was that nothing ever _happened_ in Arkadia, Indiana.

By this time tomorrow, Clarke Griffin would be safely returned to her mother. There was no flicker of doubt in his mind, no nagging uncertainty. Arkadia was probably the most boring town the state, but for that reason, it was the safest.

“Take me through what happened,” Marcus said, trying to adopt a gentler tone, sanding down the edges of annoyance in his words. It wasn’t her fault this had happened. It wasn’t her fault he hated doctors. It wasn't her fault he had been running late this morning. None of this, upon consideration, was her fault. “When did you know she was gone?”

He saw her swallow hard, blinking her brown eyes in rapid succession as if pushing back tears. Her hands, in her lap, were trembling slightly, pale against the backdrop of her dark blue jeans.

“I came home late last night from work,” Abby said, her voice paradoxically firm, contrasting with all the emotions her posture revealed. “I had a surgery, and it took longer than we thought. Yesterday Clarke told me she wanted to have dinner with the Greens – she’s good friends with Monty – and that was fine, because I got home too late to feed her.”

“Did you check with them?” Marcus asked, wondering if lines could’ve been crossed in parental communication. “Could she have stayed there last night?”

Abby shook her head, ponytail swinging like a pendulum. “I already called,” she said. “Clarke left their place before I came home.”

One possibility gone, Marcus thought. Probably would’ve been too easy, given the way his day was going.

“So you got home, and…” Marcus started, and Abby continued.

“I got home, and there were lights on in the house,” she said. “Just the downstairs. That’s something Clarke always does, she leaves lights on.”

“So you assumed she was already there,” Marcus finished.

“I saw she’d closed her door when I went upstairs,” Abby said. “She hasn’t been sleeping well lately, and I didn’t want to risk waking her up,” she continued, her voice wavering. She took a moment to breathe, her slim shoulders rattling under her corduroy jacket as she inhaled deeply and closed her eyes.

Marcus could imagine the sorts of regrets running through her head, the shadowy doubts, the sharp fears. She should’ve opened that door. She should’ve called the Green family that night, instead of waiting until the morning. She should have checked to see if her daughter’s bike was in the garage.

“Abby-“ Marcus started, unsure where his sentence was headed. He wasn’t much good at consoling – as the chief of police, he’d built walls around the vast majority of his emotions – but seeing her like this stirred some long-buried sense of empathy he thought he’d closed off for good. At the bare minimum, perhaps he could convince her this wasn’t her fault.

Abby continued talking over him, as if she hadn’t heard his interjection. “I woke up this morning and started making her breakfast,” she said. “I went to go get her up at seven, and when I opened her door, she was-“

Her breath caught, and Marcus wouldn’t let her say that last word. At least he could spare her that.

“Gone,” he said. “You saw she was gone.”

Abby nodded and looked away.

“You checked all over the house?” he asked, leaning forward a little, resting his forearms on the scuffed wooden desk. “Basement, attic, backyard?”

“Kane, do you really think I wouldn’t check my own _house_?” Abby snapped, and Marcus stiffened, sliding his arms off the desk and reaching for his coffee, gripping the handle a little harder than was necessary. Abby Griffin had his pity, but she was testing his patience.

“That’s the first thing I did,” she continued. “Then I called Hannah Green, then I called the school. She’s not in class, she’s not with the Greens, and she’s not at home.”

Marcus finished taking a sip of coffee, setting the ceramic mug down in a circular pool of condensation atop a pile of papers. The warmth soothed him, if only slightly, and he looked Abby in the eye.

“Is there a chance she might not have gone to school?” he asked.

Abby scowled, shaking her head. “Clarke loves school.”

“Are you sure?” Marcus asked. Clarke skipping school was by far the most likely scenario now, and given that she already had trouble sleeping, it was a definite possibility that the kid might’ve taken the day off to catch up on some rest.

“I have to force her to stay home when she’s sick,” Abby said. “She should be there right now, and she isn’t.”

Her voice rose a fraction at the end of her sentence, and Marcus decided it was time to start working on persuasion as well as problem-solving.

“Abby,” he said, scooting his chair forward, leaning closer again. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when a kid goes missing, they’re with a parent or a relative.”

Much to his chagrin, this didn’t seem to have the desired effect: Abby’s breath caught, her eyes widening as she leaned back in the stiff, blue plastic chair.

“What about the _one_?”

Now it was Marcus’ turn to frown. “The one?”

“The one time. You said ninety-nine times. What about the hundredth?”

“You’re not going to have to worry about the hundredth.”

She gave a huff of frustration, but allowed him to continue.

“Could she be with her dad?” Marcus asked. He had faint memories, wispy recollections of a wedding announcement in the newspaper and gossip about Arkadia’s own Abby Griffin getting married to a city boy. Nothing substantial, but if the kid existed, there _had_ to be a father somewhere.

When Abby spoke, her voice was soft; Marcus strained to hear her over the buzzing of the lights in his office.

“Jake died a year ago,” Abby said. “That’s why we moved back. The city reminded us too much of him.”

Marcus blinked, swallowing his shock. Granted, he wasn’t exactly at the center of the city’s social circle, but he thought he would have heard about something as impactful as the reasoning behind Abby Griffin’s relocation to her hometown, especially considering how well-liked she was by the general populace. Word should have reached him, one way or another: if not from his officers, than from his assistant. But it hadn’t, and he had a sneaking suspicion he knew why.

“I’m sorry,” Marcus said, because it seemed like the right thing to say. Because the alternative was saying nothing, and although Abby reminded him of a hundred painful memories from a past he’d been trying to bury for the past four years, he couldn’t let himself stay silent. Because he’d known her before all of this, before she was a doctor and he was the police chief, and damn it all, it was true. He was sorry.

He was sorry that the world had taken girl he’d once known – the girl who wore her hair in a side braid and laughed like the sun – and covered her with storm clouds and grief.

“So she’s not with her dad,” Abby said hastily, spitting out the words in rapid succession, quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “And I don’t think she would have left town.”

“Where is he buried?” Marcus asked, an idea slowly forming. If she wasn’t at school, and she wasn’t at home…she could still, in a way, be with a relative. And if her sleeping problems were tied to her grief over her dad…

“Just outside Indianapolis,” Abby said. “Why?”

“Do you think she would have gone to his grave?”

“How the hell would she have gotten there? She’s twelve!”

“Right now, let’s not worry about the logistics,” Marcus said, reaching for his coffee, desperate to give himself something to do besides staring at his visibly uncomfortable companion. “Do you think Clarke could have gone to her dad’s grave?”

Abby hesitated. “I…I guess it’s possible. If she had a way to get there.”

“She could find a way, Abby,” Marcus said. “Kids are smart. Is there anyone you think might know where she is?” he asked, beginning to chart a course of action. “Friends, family friends, teachers?”

“The friends she was with last night. She might have told them if she was going to Jake’s grave,” Abby said. Marcus asked, and she told him their names: Monty Green, Bellamy Blake, and Jasper Jordan. He scribbled them down in his notebook, along with the notes he’d taken on the events leading up to finding her seated in front of him, staring him down with the glint in her eye he recognized from twenty years ago.

If he didn’t do something, and soon, Abby Griffin damn well would.

“The way I see it, we have two options,” Marcus said, putting his pencil down on the notepad, where it landed with a dull _thunk_. “The kids might know where she is, or she might be outside Indianapolis.”

“Right.”

“Do you think either of those possibilities is more likely than the other?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “No. And I don’t see why we’re wasting time discussing them and not doing anything about it, Kane.”

He swallowed hard – he’d forgotten just how biting she could be when she was angry.

“What would you suggest, then?” he asked, indulging her. There was a very real possibility that whatever came out of her mouth next would be not only outlandish and impractical, but illegal. But if he remembered Abby half as well as he thought he did, she would need to get it out: she’d need to make her voice heard before she could listen to reason.

“We split up,” she said. “I’m not going to sit at home and wait. You go to the school and talk to the boys. They’ll take a cop more seriously than their friend’s mom. I check the grave, because I know where it is and I can get there faster.”

A decent idea, and he knew it. While he would have been loath to involve more people than necessary under normal circumstances, he had to admit – grudgingly – that it made sense. They could work on differing possibilities at the same time, and figure out what was going on faster than if he worked alone. Plus, if neither of these yielded Clarke’s whereabouts, which was highly unlikely…well, the sooner they knew, the better. And there was no part of him foolish enough to believe that his potential refusal would keep her inside the city limits: not when she’d already gotten the idea in her head. Letting him know what she was thinking was, at most, a courtesy.

Of course this realization also came with an admission that Abby was right, which would taste bitter, like soap in his mouth. Why, he wondered, couldn’t he have thought of it himself?

“All right,” he muttered, choking over the words. “That’ll work.”

Abby gave him a triumphant, shaky half-smile that fell as soon as her lips quirked. It was then that her façade slipped, and she wasn’t Abigail Griffin, one of Arkadia’s most beloved residents and their best doctor; she was Abby, a frightened mom, a woman who had a hole in her heart where her husband used to be and now faced the prospect of a matching gap with her daughter's name on it. Marcus may not have known her well enough now to know the intimate details of her life, but he recognized her slip, the bit of frantic anxiety that slipped through the cracks and dented her determined, gleaming armor.

“It’ll be all right,” he said, staring at her as the early morning sunlight dripped through the opened blinds in his office, cold and unfeeling, making her silver necklace – what he now assumed was her husband’s wedding ring – sparkle like a diamond. “Do you want to know the worst thing that’s happened, in the four years I’ve been chief in Arkadia?”

Abby raised an eyebrow, and he took it as permission to proceed.

“A bird attacked Luna Floukru’s hair,” he said, offering Abby what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Thought it was a nest.”

The joke didn’t land.

“Let’s find my daughter, Kane.”

* * *

The drive to Indianapolis was no longer than a half-hour, but to Abby, every second felt like an eon, every moment since 7 o’clock stretching and twisting into a vast, unreachable, hellacious eternity. Every heartbeat echoed throughout her body, every breath stimulated an ache that sent waves of agony through her bones. She knew it wouldn’t help her to keep mulling over it, but she couldn’t get it out of her head.

Clarke was gone.

Her baby, the only thing left in this world that _mattered_ , was missing. And with every turn of the wheels her thoughts spun farther and farther from reality, breaking free of reason, conjuring unlikely scenarios and impractical doubts. The line between nightmare and reality blurred as she sped down the highway with nothing but the dull crooning of the radio to keep her company. She’d turned it on in an attempt to distract herself, but the preppy, cheerful songs only made her feel hollow.

Her brain couldn’t seem to break free of the horror stories she’d seen on the news, the one-in-a-million terrifying tales of kidnappings and children who disappeared, never to be found again…or worse. And although Kane had said it was unlikely – said that the worst thing that had happened in Arkadia during his tenure had been a bird attack – that wasn’t the statement that stuck with her, once she’d pulled away from the station.

_Ninety-nine times out of a hundred._

What if Clarke was the one?

What if Clarke was the _one_?

Cruising fifteen over the speed limit, securely nothing more than a blur in the left lane, Abby was largely unaware of the withering stares aimed her way by cars she sped past, leaving them behind in the dust of her tan Ford. The speed she was maintaining was a detail hadn’t broken through the wall of anxiety that slowly constructed itself around the center of her brain responsible for reasoning; if she’d been thinking clearly, she would’ve at least found the sense to hope a cop wasn’t watching.

As she watched the road for an exit she knew was well over ten minutes away, she noticed it was oddly dark for a Wednesday afternoon, the sun masked by a blanket of thick, gray clouds. It was dark enough to force the freeway streetlights to cast a yellow glow on the cracked pavement, peppering the hood of her car with light as she pressed the gas pedal down deeper and deeper, engine roaring as if in protest. The clouds seemed to be contemplating rain, and idly, Abby thought it’d probably be the last storm of the year. The November air wasn’t yet cold enough for snow, but it would be soon enough, dusting the earth in a film of ice and choking the last vibrance of fall from the trees.

“I’m coming, honey,” she whispered, a gravelly, quiet prayer – the first she’d said in a year. “Please. I’m on my way.”

Was it possible, that Clarke could have found her way to Jake’s grave? Did she even know where it was? Granted, she’d gone to the funeral – she’d been there at Abby’s side, tears streaming down her pale cheeks as they lowered her dad into the earth and covered him with soil, separating him from her forever. And Clarke had a damn good memory. It wasn’t unrealistic, Abby thought, that she could’ve memorized the name of the graveyard. And Kane had seemed to think that Clarke could’ve found a way there if she was determined: whether that meant she took a taxi, borrowed fee money from her friends…Abby didn’t know, and pondering it made her stomach lurch.

God only knew how the place – or rather, the day they’d had to spend standing on its soil – had haunted her own nightmares, and she suspected it was the reason Clarke couldn’t seem to close her eyes at night. Jake’s absence had torn their happy, contented family life apart, ripped it to shreds from the moment the doctors dressed in white, dripping in sympathy, broke the news. There was an emptiness in her daughter’s gaze that had formed in that moment, a dullness in her sea-blue eyes that had yet to sparkle again.

She saw hints of it, a gleam when she biked to Jasper’s house or played board games with her friends, but when she looked at her mother…the only word that came to mind was _haunted_ , and something in Abby’s heart shattered every time she looked in her daughter’s eyes.

Abby had thought moving out of the city would make it better. That putting distance between the skyscrapers and sidewalks they’d walked down with Jake would make it easier for them to let go, to stop hearing his voice echo through the halls of their old apartment and seeing him in reflections in the mirror. Sometimes – when she was too tired to walk in a straight line – she still saw him waiting for her, opening his arms to embrace her and kiss away the stress of being a doctor in the city.

Maybe, she thought, Clarke wasn’t the only one who was haunted.

Flicking on her turn signal, the clicking of the mechanisms drawing her back to her equally bleak reality, Abby moved to pass a truck. She took note of the exit sign as she slid into the right lane: 103. Well, there was little point in moving back now. The cemetery was exit 105, less than five miles away, and the road ahead unfolded completely unobstructed under her steady white headlights.

 _I’m coming,_ she thought again, repeating it like a mantra, hope building inside her like a hurricane. _I’ll find you. I’ll find you._

There it was in the distance, shockingly green against the dark gray sky: the exit sign. Abby flicked on her turn signal once more – after all, there were only so many traffic laws she could violate in a half-hour trip – and turned off the freeway, registering how sweaty her palms had become once she shifted them on the leather steering wheel cover. Her fingers and palms left impressions where they’d rested for the majority of the trip, tiny beads of saltwater stuck to the surface, and she gritted her teeth as she stopped at the stop sign, her hands sliding off the wheel as her foot found the brake. She hadn’t noticed herself sweating, but the evidence was irrefutable.

Cornfields spread into the distance, dust and dirt orbiting her car tires as she sped – 70 miles per hour in a 55 speed limit zone – toward the place that might be both her damnation and salvation. Less than five minutes, now. Clarke was either there or she wasn’t, and either way, Abby’s heart was racing too quickly for her thoughts to catch up.

The endless sea of green parted on the right side of the road, jarring her from her anxious reverie, and Abby didn’t bother clicking on her turn signal: there was no one around who’d need the information that she was turning. The road was as listless, filthy and empty as the day she’d first driven it, wondering why in the hell Jake had insisted on being buried _here_ instead of a nicer cemetery, a place closer to the city, a place at least partially infused with the same vitality he’d brought to their family. But instructions had been clear, and this was where his parents were buried, and Abby could at least see the reasoning behind laying him to rest with the two people – besides Clarke and herself – he loved most in the world.

Her car bounced as it made the shift from pavement to gravel, tires crunching and stirring up a fog of dust. The lot lay empty, barren, save for her own vehicle moving determinedly toward a single, unlit streetlight in the center of the emptiness. Though she hadn’t yet parked her car and knew damn well she wasn’t within eyesight of her husband’s grave, Abby began craning her neck for anything, _anything_ – a flash of blonde hair, the blue windbreaker her daughter had been wearing last time she saw her – that might evidence Clarke had been, or was still, here.

She turned off the car with a quick, short twist of the key in the ignition, yanked it from its place and snatched her purse from the passenger seat. No sooner was she out of the car than she began yelling, angling her body around the light pole she’d parked a little too close to for comfort.

“Clarke! _Clarke_!”

The wind had picked up considerably, and Abby assuaged her boiling nerves by placating them with an excuse: the oncoming storm might have swept away her call. Bounding across the gravel and throwing open the rusty cemetery gate with a _crash,_ Abby began making her way between rows of weathered gray headstones. A shiver ran through her that had nothing to do with the climate, and she cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed again, lungs burning,

“ _Clarke_!”

Still no response, no cry of acknowledgement over the screaming November gusts. She was no farther than fifty yards from Jake’s grave now, and once she turned the corner, she’d be able to see, once and for all, if Clarke was – God, she could barely even think it, though she could hope for it.

“ _CLARKE_!”

Abby rounded the corner, boots squishing and imprinting against uncomfortably mushy ground, and came to a rigid, breathless halt, one last yell of her daughter’s name freezing on her tongue.

It was empty.

Jake’s grave was there, of course, right next to his parents’ headstones. But no 12-year-old sat huddled in front of that year-old stone, desperate for company from the father who had been everything to her for as long as she could remember. No blonde head snapped up to acknowledge her mother’s screams, no legs carried her toward her mother’s tortured calls. Clarke wasn’t here, and she wasn’t at home, and she wasn’t with the Green family, and she wasn’t at school.

Disbelieving, Abby kept making her way toward the empty space of land where her daughter should have been. Logically, she knew there was nothing to find. But the ground was wet enough that even if she glimpsed footprints, indentations of her daughter’s size four tennis shoes that were more mudstains than original color, it would be enough. It would be enough to breathe life into the flickering hope inside Abby’s chest.

She reached the headstone soon enough, standing a few feet away, watching for any sign that young feet had trodden here earlier in the day. But all that revealed itself to her was empty, untouched brown soil and distasteful, dark memories of a time she wished so desperately she could forget, memories that stained her soul and left her in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Stomach clenching, Abby forced herself to look.

_Jacob Griffin. Beloved husband and father._

Her body gave her a choice between vomiting and swallowing hard to push down the yogurt she’d eaten before her nightmare began, and she chose to swallow with what little might was left in her trembling body. Joints aching, she kneeled down on the wet ground, wincing a little as water soaked the knees of her dark jeans. Her fingers brushed against the cold granite rock, and an electric jolt of agony nearly sent her reeling backward.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice breaking on the final syllable. “I’m so sorry.”

Worst of all, she thought, she wasn’t sure to whom she was addressing her apology.

Abby forced a shuddering, deep breath through her lungs, doing her best to refocus as her right hand still rested, shaking, on her husband’s headstone. Clearly, Clarke hadn’t been here. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t still in Arkadia, somewhere, in the woods, on the outskirts, _somewhere_. This was a disappointment, but it wasn’t a defeat, and she wouldn’t rest until her daughter was found. She owed it to her daughter, herself, and the man she still loved to fight with every heartbeat and every breath, to kick and scream and tear at the truth until it revealed itself.

Clarke was gone, but not forever.

Not forever, because Abby Griffin damn well wouldn’t accept that.

Raising herself to her feet and brushing dirt from her knees, Abby strode back toward the cemetery entrance. She glanced around at the names that meant nothing to her, desperate for even the slightest evidence that her assumption had been incorrect. Nothing proved her wrong; for all intents and purposes, she might as well have been the first person to visit the graveyard in months.

The gate yielded to her push with a low groan, and Abby let it click shut behind her. A few long strides took her to her car, and she unlocked it and slid into the driver’s seat in one fluid motion, slamming the door shut with enough force to rock the vehicle. Suddenly nauseous, she rested her head on the steering wheel, setting her purse and keys down on the floor. A few seconds – to come to terms with her reality – was all she would allow herself.

 _In, and out,_ she told herself, trying to force her racing heartbeat to synchronize with the tempo in her thoughts. _In, and out. In, and out._

And then, just when she’d gotten her breathing under control, it happened.

“ _Darling you got to let me know, should I stay or should I go_?”

Abby’s head snapped up from where it had rested on her steering wheel, and she glanced at the radio, questioning whether she’d turned it on. The dial was unturned. No telltale glow emanated from the display. So how the hell was she hearing Jake’s – and then, because it was Jake’s, _Clarke’s_ – favorite song?

“ _If you say that you are mine, I'll be here 'til the end of time…”_

Abby shoved her key into the ignition, trying to eject a cassette tape that she knew wasn’t in the player. Guitar boomed over her speakers, blaring in the confined space, swept away by the wind outside. She pressed every button, flipped every switch in an attempt to discern where the music was coming from, breathing exercises long having proven themselves useless.

“ _So you got to let me know, should I stay or should I go_?”

“Clarke?” Abby whispered, knowing fully well it was insane. It was insane, to believe this malfunction, or whatever it was, could be connected with her daughter, and even crazier to think Clarke might be connected with what was likely a radio issue on a very old car. But dear God, she needed something right now. And whether it was her mind playing tricks on her, insomnia taking its toll, stress making its presence known…some small, desperate part of her didn’t even care.

And just like that, once her daughter’s name left her lips, the music stopped.


	2. Alderaan

Marcus didn’t know what he had expected when he and Byrne, his deputy, showed up to the school. What little knowledge of middle schools he had was limited to his own experience inside them, which had long ago rotted and tarnished to make way for newer, fresher, more poignant experiences. But even with only the faintest of recollections pertaining to his youth, he had to admit not much of Polis Middle School had changed.

The floors, made of light gray and white checkerboard tiles that spanned the length of one of his feet in length and width, shone as he strode into the building, Byrne at his heels. The tiles were a particularly sharp memory, seeing as he’d spent so much time looking down at them; sometimes voluntarily, sometimes…not.

Marcus removed his hat and took a look around, curious as to the status of other landmarks from his youth. The glass trophy case still sat in the center of the entryway, ubiquitous and vague as usual: what did a middle school sports team win trophies for, anyway? Then again, Marcus thought with a tiny smirk as he walked past, perhaps if he’d approached sports with anything resembling enthusiasm, he could’ve found out. The largest award he’d ever received for physical activity was a passing grade in gym.

The lockers, too, were the same – same off-white paint, the color of whipping cream, that had chipped off the corners to unveil the flecked gray metal underneath. It was clear Polis didn’t have the money to go around repainting the lockers, or if they did, they decided the funds would be better allocated elsewhere.

“Sir?” Byrne’s voice startled him, though he didn’t show it. He blinked rapidly, beating back visions of days long past, of the girl with the braid and the brown eyes who had helped him pick up his books when he’d been sent tumbling down the tiles by a well-placed foot in his path.

Who would’ve thought, all these years later, that she’d be the reason he’d again set foot here?

“Yes, Officer Byrne?”

“Were you able to talk to the Principal?” she asked, her tone businesslike, focused. Clearly, no such nostalgia clouded her thoughts.

“I left a message with his secretary,” Marcus responded. “She told me he couldn’t come to the phone when I called.”

Byrne gave a short snort of disbelief, echoing her skepticism down the hallway. Marcus had to admit, he questioned it, too – what principal was too busy to talk to the police, especially where it concerned a missing student?

“He’s pulling Clarke’s friends out of class to talk to us,” Marcus explained, offering a kindness to balance Byrne’s judgment of the man she hadn’t yet met. “We’re supposed to meet them in his office.”

Byrne had caught up with him now, her strides matching his own. She opened her mouth to say something, but the sound of the bell buzzed overhead, drowning her words in a shrill, metallic shriek.

_Brrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiing!_

The tone of the bell hadn’t changed either, he thought, making a conscious effort to keep his focus on the present. Oh, how he’d once waited for that sound: for the angelic hymn of the metal bell that would release him from fifth-period introductory algebra. He hadn’t seen a use for it back then, and he damn well hadn’t used it since.

Their path was soon obstructed by all manner of swarming children, darting across the hall from classroom to classroom, giving them wide-eyed stares as he and Byrne wove through the crowd. Undoubtedly, they had some sort of inherent magnetism: they were cops. Marcus could almost hear the rumors forming.

After what felt like a lengthy battle but could have been no longer than five minutes in earnest, they’d made their way through the swarm and arrived at the front office. The door, wooden and marked by sketches of the school’s weathered brick exterior, was ajar. Marcus knocked anyway. Today, they couldn’t be _too_ polite.

“Police,” he announced, and a muffled voice told him to come in.

An assistant regarded him and Byrne with a welcoming smile. She rose from her desk and shuffled toward the counter that nearly split the room in two, save for the half-door on either side of the median.

“You called earlier,” she said, and Marcus nodded.

“We’re here to see the principal,” he said. “In regards to Clarke Griffin.”

“Go right in,” the woman said. Now, since she’d come closer, Marcus could read her name tag: _Bea_. “His is the last office on the right. Here, I’ll show you.”

Bea unlocked the half-door for Marcus, and he held it open so Byrne could pass through. He let the smooth wood slip from his fingers, the door clicking closed behind him. The assistant led him down a hallway no longer than twenty feet, knocking on the door much as Marcus had done earlier.

“Charles,” she said, “the police are here to talk to you.”

Marcus heard a mumble of assent from the opposite side of the door, masked by a white wall. They were allowed entry, and Bea closed the door behind them. He was able to catch a glimpse of the name emblazoned on a brass plaque just before she did. _Charles Pike._

“Welcome, officers,” the man – Charles – said, standing from his chair and extending a hand in Marcus’ direction. He shook it briefly, firmly, in a show of business – of intent to get to the bottom of whatever the hell was going on here. Which, in fairness to the slightly-frazzled looking, balding man in front of him, might have been nothing. Probably was nothing. When they looked back at this ordeal next week, next month, next year, Marcus Kane was certain they’d all have that same word in their heads: nothing. Even Abby, though she’d never admit it.

“Thank you,” Marcus said with a nod.

Charles ushered them to a pair of seats in front of his desk. Marcus sat to the left, placing his hat in his lap. Next to him, Byrne had already taken out her notepad and begun writing something, though he was too far from her to discern what it was.

“Thank you for coming,” Charles said, somber. It was clear that he knew exactly what had brought them there, that the message had, indeed, been passed along. “Although I wish it was under better circumstances.”

“Undoubtedly,” Marcus said, unwilling to engage in small talk for the sake of small talk. They were on a deadline, and every word was a second they wouldn’t be able to reclaim. “Is there anything you can tell us about Clarke Griffin we might not already know, Mr. Pike?”

The man blinked a few times, apparently stunned by Marcus’ sidestep of his conversation-starter. “I…well, that’s hard to say. I don’t have much interaction with her.”

Marcus nodded. “So she’s never been sent down to see you?”

Charles smiled. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Although I can’t say the same for her friends.”

A quick glance at Byrne – she was scribbling away.

“So she’s a good student?” she interjected, not looking up from her notepad. She finished a page, flipped it with the crisp sound of paper sliding against paper. “To the best of your understanding?”

“She’s one of our brightest,” Charles said. “I get a list of all the Honor Roll qualifiers every semester, and she’s been on it since she started. Remarkably gifted, I’d say.”

 _Kids are smart,_ he remembered saying hours ago. It seemed Clarke was no exception to the rule.

“Do you, based on your knowledge of her, think she’d purposely cut class?” Byrne asked, this time looking up with a raised eyebrow in the principal’s direction.

“No!” he exclaimed. “Not Clarke. She cares too much about her studies. But I think your questions would be better directed to the boys. Her friends.”

Abby and the principal were in agreement – Clarke wouldn’t skip school if she could help it.

“I understand,” Marcus said. “But there’s one more we need to ask.”

“Of course.”

Byrne gave him a sidelong look – to her knowledge, that was all the questions. But he was improvising, testing Abby’s claims. One checked out: it was time to see if the others did as well.

Marcus took a deep breath. “Has she seemed different to you lately?”

Charles swallowed hard, looked away for a moment. “I’ve heard, from a few people, that she didn’t take her dad’s passing well,” he said, his voice soft. “Haven’t seen it myself, but it’s coming up on a year now. If you want to know what I think –“ he paused, and Marcus had to douse a spark of annoyance flickering in his chest. _Yes, that’s why we’re talking to you. We want to know what you think._

“Clarke Griffin is a kid who misses her dad,” Charles continued after a pause. “Do I know if that’s affected, maybe caused…whatever’s happening with her? I don’t. But she’s twelve years old. I can’t imagine losing a parent at that age. How hard that must be for her. And poor Abby, taking on double shifts at the doctor’s office. A loss like that shatters everything a family stands for. Their ideals.”

Marcus swallowed the words creeping up his tongue at this man’s ignorance, his insistence of what made an “ideal” family: _try growing up with an asshole of a dad. Try growing up with a dad who must’ve been born with a belt in his hand, because it was practically molded in his grip. Try growing up being thankful when he leaves, finding religion when your father’s shadow slinks out of sight. Try growing up with a mother who works two jobs to provide even the shell of a normal life, a mother who comes home so tired she falls asleep sitting up in the entryway when she sits down to take off her shoes._

What a perversity his family would have been to this man, Marcus thought. And what a mess it truly _had_ been, for all those years until his mother put her foot down and kicked Lonnie Kane out, the years Marcus walked the halls of Polis Middle School pale and lifeless as a ghost and did his best to forget the purgatory that waited with a belt in its hand to welcome him home.

But those were things he’d never say, things he’d never said to anyone – not even Callie, whom he allowed to unlock that door, but never let her inside.

So he swallowed them, choked them down, and instead said,

“I’m sure.”

Oblivious to the musings of the officer in front of him, Charles Pike nodded. “If that’s all you need from me, I’ll go get the boys? They’ll help you more than I can, I’m sure. They know Clarke well.”

“Yes, that’d be great,” Marcus said, suddenly wishing he had a smoke on hand. Today was digging up memories he didn’t even realize he had: memories he desperately needed to stay buried, hidden, far from the forefront. He’d once entertained the notion that he’d quit, that his brief foray with the stuff when he was a twentysomething was just that.

But life happened, as it made damn sure to do, and he wound up with a cigarette in his hand again, almost like it burned itself into him, imprinted on him. Probably for the better it had never let him go, all things considered. He had no clue how he would’ve gotten to work this morning without a cigarette to slow his thoughts. To smoke out the demons of his subconscious, at least until night came around again.

Life was funny like that. Or maybe twisted. Or maybe sickening, maybe paralyzing, maybe ironic. He didn’t know, religion had long ago convinced him he _couldn’t_ know, and now, having left it all behind, he found he had no interest in determining between the options. Life was what it was, and it made him what it made him. He only knew one thing for sure: when he got out of here, he was getting a damn smoke.

Charles Pike stood from his desk again, with a promise to get the boys from their classes. Byrne and Marcus thanked him, and once he left, a comfortable silence enshrouded the room. That was the nice thing about Byrne, he thought: she didn’t feel a need to fill those gaps. She was comfortable enough in her own head to not need knowledge of what was in someone else’s. For that, he respected her.

Five minutes passed, and Charles returned with three young boys in tow. They followed him in a line, though they dispersed once they entered the office, settling on the stained, floral-patterned couch in the far corner. It was barely large enough to fit them.

The moment they were seated, they began whispering. It was as though they thought the adults were miles away, instead of only feet from where they spoke. Needless to say, every word was audible.

“What do you think they’re gonna _do_ to us?”

“Are we getting arrested?”

“Oh man, my mom’s gonna _kill_ me.”

“I can’t get arrested! Christmas is coming!”

“Christmas isn’t for another two months.”

“It’s still coming, Bellamy.”

“Do you think we’re going to get to ride in a cop car?”

“That’s _boss_! I call shotgun!”

“YOU CAN’T CALL SHOTGUN, JASPER! HE DIDN’T EVEN SAY WE COUL-“

Byrne looked at Marcus, pen in hand, expression tellingly blank.

Marcus looked at Charles, one eyebrow slightly raised.

Charles looked at the boys and took a deep breath, all with the resigned air of a man who’d had to do this countless times before.

“Enough!” he shouted, and just like that – with a single, grand bellow – all chatter ceased.

“Boys, this is Police Chief Kane and Officer Byrne,” Charles said, gesturing to each of them in turn. “They’re here to talk to you about Clarke. I expect you to treat them with the same respect as you treat your teachers and your friends.”

“Sorry,” the boy with straight black hair cut straight across his forehead whispered, his brown eyes pleading. “Please don’t arrest me, sir. I don’t want to die. My mom would kill me, sir.”

The boy next to him – wearing a bright blue hoodie and a baseball cap that barely held down his wavy dark brown curls – elbowed his companion in the ribs.

“Don’t suggest it to them!”

“Maybe they arrested Clarke and now they’re coming for us,” the first said, once he’d recovered from the jab. “I mean she didn’t _do_ anything, but neither did we, and -”

“Quiet!” ordered the third of the trio, a tall boy with a healthy dusting of freckles across his tanned skin. “They’re not going to arrest us.”

Marcus sighed. It was time to stop being a bystander.

“Boys!” he exclaimed, and much as he’d predicted, all squabbling ceased. “What can you tell me about your friend Clarke? Do you know where she is?”

He saw them all leaning forward, gearing up for a third relapse into unintelligible yammering. Sensing a headache forming, Marcus thought it best to clarify.

“ _One_ at a _time,”_ he said, and the freckled boy and the hoodie-wearing boy closed their mouths, leaving only the initial speaker to start the conversation off. As Marcus studied him, he saw a sticker name tag plastered to his shirt, peeling off at the edges, undoubtedly part of some class activity. _Hello, my name is: Monty._

“We saw her yesterday,” he said, with a surprising amount of calm considering the outbursts to which he and his friends had proven themselves to be prone. “She came over to play Dungeons & Dragons with us.”

 _Finally_ , Marcus thought with no small amount of relief. _Now we’re getting somewhere._

“I was told she went to the Green’s house,” Marcus said. “Which one of you is that?”

Monty raised his hand timidly, putting it down almost as soon as it reached midair.

“Me.”

“Okay,” Marcus said, aiming a glance in Byrne’s direction. They already had notes from Abby, but it was good to at least see everything was checking out. “Do you know what time she left?”

At this, the boy in the center of the couch – the one in the hoodie – chimed in.

“It was late,” he said. “Probably around ten o’clock, I think. Monty didn’t plan the game right, so it took six hours.”

Ten o’clock. Marcus took a glance at the clock on Charles’ wall, found it to read three o’clock. Assuming the boys were the last to see Clarke, she’d been missing for seventeen hours. Still a good window – they could find her pretty easily, assuming Abby hadn’t done so already.

“I didn’t _know_ it was going to take six hours, Jasper!” Monty said. “You try planning it if you think you can do better!”

So, the one in the middle was Jasper. Which meant the boy on the end…the one who was quiet, largely in the background of all the commotion and controlling the chaos, must have been the Blake kid. Bellamy.

Marcus decided Bellamy was his favorite.

“How did she get to your house, Monty?” Marcus asked, doing his best to sound comforting. He was largely out of practice in interacting with kids, and hoped everything he said didn’t come out sounding threatening. He was tempted to flat-out tell them no one was getting arrested, just so they were reassured.

“Bike,” Monty said. “She rides her bike.”

“I see,” Marcus said as Byrne scribbled away, taking down every detail. “Were any of you riding with her when she went home? Do any of you live near her?”

“I do,” Jasper volunteered. “I was riding with her when…”

He stopped, and Marcus sensed he’d struck a nerve.

“When what?” Marcus asked, lowering his voice. “What happened, Jasper?”

“We race each other through Alderaan,” Jasper said. “Last one through gets blown up by the Death Star.”

“Like in Star Wars,” Monty offered.

“Yes, I’ve seen Star Wars,” Marcus said, his voice flat. He turned his attention back to Jasper. “So you were racing Clarke, and…”

“She was way ahead of me,” Jasper said. “I stopped, because I was tired, and yelled that she won. She didn’t turn around. I just thought she couldn’t hear me.”

“And you didn’t hear anything?” Marcus asked the boy, hoping the presence of his friends, Byrne, and the school principal wouldn’t have any adverse effects on his honesty. “Anything that would make you think she crashed or went off-road?”

“No,” Jasper said, looking down at the floor. It was clear he’d begun to blame himself for what happened, and Marcus felt a flash of guilt. It wasn’t Jasper Jordan’s fault his friend had gone missing: for all they knew, if he’d been with her he could’ve gotten lost, too. “But she was way ahead of me. Like I said.”

Byrne chimed in. “Where is this…Alderaan?”

“It’s a road to Monty’s house,” Bellamy said, the first time he’d spoken since the initial outburst. “I don’t remember what it’s really called.”

Jasper and Monty frowned in succession. “Yeah, I don’t either,” Monty said. If Jasper’s expression was anything to go by, he wouldn’t be of any additional help on the subject.

“Can you tell me what it looks like?” Marcus asked. Even if he could only get landmarks, it would be enough for him to figure out where this fictional planet resided in reality.

“It’s the last road in the neighborhood,” Bellamy said. “The woods are on one side.”

“And there’s a weird wire fence on the other,” Monty chimed in. After that, the boys went quiet – apparently, the woods and a weird wire fence amassed the sum of their collective knowledge.

 _The woods and a weird wire fence,_ Marcus mused. _Better than nothing._

“All right,” Marcus said words composed more of an exhausted exhale than any true enunciation. “Thank you.”

“Maybe Clarke’s with Octavia,” Bellamy said, quietly, more to himself than to anyone present in the room.

“Octavia?” Marcus asked, and the boys – save Bellamy, who was looking at the floor – stiffened.

“I don’t think she’s with your imaginary friend, Bellamy,” Jasper said, hitting his friend with a sidelong look. Bellamy’s gaze remained on the floor, and he mumbled something Marcus couldn’t comprehend over the whirring of the fan and Monty, who was bouncing his knee and creating a tapping sound every time his tennis shoe collided with the floor.

“So Octavia is…an imaginary friend,” Marcus said, wanting to be sure he had every piece of the puzzle. If Octavia were, for some reason, important…he needed to know that now, rather than finding out after the fact.

“Yeah,” Monty said, as Bellamy turned a shade of bright crimson, clearly regretting his suggestion.

“Boys, I need you to be honest with me,” Marcus said, using his best “police officer” voice: the tone he reserved for speeding tickets, arresting weekend drunks, and breaking up bar fights. “If I need to talk to an ‘Octavia’ so I can find Clarke, you need to tell me where I can find her.”

Bellamy sighed, his shoulders slumping under his ill-fitting khaki windbreaker.

“You can’t,” he said, finally making eye contact with Marcus. “She isn’t here. She’s not real.”

The boy’s tone seemed hollow, fake, as though he were repeating words off a script. But right now, Marcus Kane had a lead in the form of a road with a wire fence and the woods on one side, that at least partially led from Monty Green’s house to Clarke and Abby Griffin’s. He wasn’t about to stay here and discuss the Blake kid’s imaginary friend when he had a missing kid to find.

“You’ve been very helpful, boys,” Marcus said, forcing a smile. “We’re going to find your friend.”

“Can we help?” Jasper asked as Marcus stood to leave, and he stared down at the kid with a scowl. If anything was absolutely out of the question, it was the kids “helping.” The Arkadia Police Department had enough on its hands with one missing kid: it sure as hell didn’t need two of them.

“Please?” Jasper continued. “We’ll be really good and we won’t even ask you to let us ride in your police car.”

“No,” Marcus said, re-adopting the “police officer” tone: flat, stern, uncompromising. “You may _not_.”

“ _BUT CLARKE’S OUT THERE_!” Monty said, his words tumbling out as a loud bellow. Apparently, he thought an increase in volume would better his chances. It wouldn’t.

“You are not, under any circumstances, to go into those woods looking for Clarke,” Marcus said, looking each of them in the eyes in turn as he spoke. “You’re going home, and you’re staying there until you leave for school tomorrow morning. Do I make myself clear?”

The visit wouldn’t have been complete without another outburst, and all at once, the boys – or at least, Monty and Jasper – began talking.

“That’s not fair!”

“She’s our friend! She wouldn’t leave _us_!”

“I have a flashlight and some Airheads. I’ll stay out all night if I have to.”

Marcus swallowed hard, let his gaze wander to the ceiling, and wondered how the hell a fifteen-minute meeting with Clarke’s friends had turned into a headache he’d have for the rest of day. Slowly he counted to ten and put his hat back on again, willing the impatience uncoiling inside him to curl back up again.

Instead of yelling, which was what he damn well felt like doing, Marcus simply took a step forward. He towered over the boys as they sat on the couch, and with as much professionalism and intimidation as he could muster, repeated himself for a second time.

“Do I make myself _clear_?”

Quiet, then, as the boys’ fear of the law – and of getting arrested, no doubt – returned once more. They all looked at each other and back at him, as though they were communicating telepathically, having an entire conversation to which Marcus, wearing a badge and carrying a gun, wasn’t privy. Eventually the wordless deliberation ended, and Bellamy spoke.

“Yes, sir.”

The rest of the kids nodded, and Marcus at least felt relieved that they’d listened to him. Whether or not they obeyed, that was up to their parents to enforce and discern. His duty ended here.

“Good,” Marcus said, stepping away. “Thank you.”

He looked at Charles, calmly shuffling papers behind his desk, and addressed a brief thanks to him in turn. He smiled and offered encouragement, saying he knew Clarke would soon be found. Byrne stepped out the door before his sentence had ended, apparently eager to put as much distance between herself and the trio of 12-year-olds as possible.

Marcus started to follow her and looked back, felt three pairs of eyes studying him intently. He couldn’t resist one last comment, even if it was almost fulfilling superstition to let it slip past his lips.

“Stay out of trouble,” he said, hoping – for both his sake and theirs – that the kids would listen. “Do you hear me?”

Only one of the boys nodded, his freckled chin bobbing up and down along with the mop of dark curls on top of his head.

Well, Marcus thought. Not promising, but exactly what he had expected. And if nothing else, at least he could count on Bellamy Blake and his imaginary friend. 

***

As soon as Marcus was seated in the truck, he brought his radio to his lips.

“Flo, anything from Abby Griffin?” he asked, feeling himself start to do a very dangerous thing: hope.

It wasn’t impossible, that Clarke could have made her way to her dad’s grave. Kids could do crazy, strange things when they were determined, and her friends’ story didn’t do anything to disprove the theory that she could’ve gone there. If she’d gotten up early in the morning, before Abby woke up for work, got someone to drive her or – God knew how – got a taxi to drive down for her from Indianapolis, that would do the trick.

“She called earlier,” the department’s assistant said, her voice raspy over the murky airwaves. “Her daughter wasn’t there.”

“Damn,” Marcus said, his heart sinking. Just as quickly as his hopes had risen, they came crashing down again. And knowing Abby, she was probably out in the middle of the woods right now, risking getting lost to find her kid.

If he had to be responsible for locating both members of the Griffin family…

“Should I tell her you met with her daughter’s friends?” Flo asked.

“Yes. Go ahead and call her,” Marcus said, thinking there was at least an eighty percent chance she wouldn’t pick up, anyway. Not given how she’s been acting this morning. _I’m not going to sit at home and wait,_ she’d said, and he’d bet his whole month’s earnings that she wasn’t. But for department policy’s sake, he had to at least adhere to protocol and try to make Abby aware of what was happening.

“Tell her we talked to the kids. We know the last place her daughter was seen last night,” Marcus said. “Byrne and I are going to check the woods and the surrounding area. Call around and get some search parties together. As many people as you can.”

Byrne raised her eyebrows at him, clearly wondering how truthful he’d been when he said he was sure they’d be able to find the kid. An “as many people as you can get” search party didn’t exactly exude confidence, he knew. But at this point, with each of their steps only pushing them back a few more, it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more people walking. And besides, the sooner he could get Abby Griffin off his case, the better.

“I’ll get the phone book,” Flo said, always ready for battle. Byrne took this as her cue to start the car, engine rumbling to life with a puff of white smoke. It reminded Marcus, with an ache in his lungs, that he still hadn’t gotten that damn cigarette.

“Thank you,” Marcus said.

“All right,” Flo said. “You be careful out there. We’ve been getting reports of electrical surges all day.”

In spite of himself, Marcus had to smile. His own mother had passed away years ago, when he’d been living in the city, and her memory was yet another ghost that walked beside him with every step he took. But in her absence, Flo seemed to have taken up a kind of honorary parental position, often attempting to serve as both his assistant and his mother. She was known to take cigarettes from his mouth and put them out with her disapproving _tsk-tsk_ , reminding him that smoking was harmful to his health, handing him a piece of fruit or a glass of water instead.

This, on the other hand, wasn’t just a matter of Marcus Kane’s less-than-healthful habits. Electrical surges were an abnormality in town, and while they weren’t anything worth getting too worked up over, it was worth noticing and taking precautions.

“We will,” Marcus said, taking his finger off the button and setting the radio aside.

He pulled out a map of Arkadia from the glove compartment, tracing the path from Monty Green’s home to Clarke Griffin’s with a red pen. There were a few different routes the kids could’ve taken, but only one that bordered the woods; a line of pavement from one end of town to the other, that tapered off into cul de sacs and cut short at the edge of town into the woods.

“Turn right up here,” Marcus instructed Byrne as she approached the stoplight. “I think I know where the kids were riding their bikes.”

Byrne did as she was told, and slowly, they began veering off the main roads and into subdivisions, sleepy gray homes in a sleepy gray town. As they approached the outskirts of town the distances between houses increased, the size of the structures grew smaller, the surroundings became more and more wooded and less and less populated. Why, Marcus thought, would the kids choose to bike through here instead of going through town?

Probably for the adventure of it all, he answered himself. The excitement of being somewhere remote, somewhere where the real world seemed to melt into a clay they could mold with their imaginations. A woodland universe that, at night on the ride home from a friend’s house, could be the doomed planet from Star Wars, or a spaceship, or whatever the hell they wanted it to be. Marcus knew all about that addictive kind of escapism, but it meant something different to these kids, he knew. They didn’t have to create a new world to get away from the real one: at least from what he could tell, reality had been nothing but kind to them.

Well, not Clarke.

“So we’re looking for a…wire fence?” Byrne said, sounding every bit as skeptical as she probably felt. To the kids, a metal gate could probably be any number of things: a fence someone put up to keep their dogs inside the yard, a “keep out” sign on someone’s property bordered by barbed wire, or something else entirely. Marcus couldn’t blame her if she was feeling a little exasperated.

“A _weird_ wire fence,” Marcus corrected her, smirking out into the woods. His nerves were almost shot for the day, his patience was fast wearing thin, and he thought maybe cracking a joke would at least revive him a fraction.

He’d forgotten jokes didn’t wear well on him anymore, and Byrne sounded troubled when she responded.

“Are you all right, sir?” she asked. At that, Marcus turned his head, regarding his deputy with no small amount of confusion. Apparently, he wasn’t allowed to poke fun at their ludicrous, infuriating situation without his mental stability being called into question.

“Fine,” Marcus said, all humor evaporated from his tone. Nothing but the humming of the engine for a few moments, while Marcus contemplated asking the thing he knew it would do him no good to ask, to get an answer he knew he didn’t really want to hear.

“Why do you ask?” he continued, curiosity winning out over practicality. Byrne was quiet for a few more moments, staring fixatedly on the road ahead. Even when she spoke, she didn’t look in his direction.

“This is personal, for you,” she said, her tone even, measured. It was clear to him that she was taking great pains to remain inoffensive, to not insult the man who had the power to fire her. Not that he would, anyway – Byrne was one of the best on the force, if not _the_ best. But she was treading in dangerous waters here, floating toward powerful currents, and from the set of her jaw and the tension in her shoulders, she knew it.

Too far into the conversation to back out now, Marcus saw no choice but to soldier on.

“It’s personal for the whole town,” he said, doing his damnedest to deflect the topic. If he had to make it through this, he could at least keep her away from the parts of his past that were the darkest. The places he hadn’t shone a light in for four whole years. “A kid is missing.”

She gave a respectful, short nod, although he could tell she knew he was sidestepping her point.

“You’ll have to forgive my intrusion,” she said, speaking slowly, as though every word were being pulled reluctantly out of her. Marcus turned back to look out the window again, now more out of discomfort than necessity. It would be easier to get through this if she couldn’t see his face. Where was the goddamn weird wire fence?

“I didn’t mean to pry,” Byrne continued. “I just wanted clarification. There had been talk around the station that you and Abby Griffin -“

_Shit._

“STOP!” Marcus yelled, and instantly, Byrne slammed on the brakes. The car skidded a few feet, leaving streaks of black in its wake. They both jolted forward and then crashed back against the black leather seats, slamming against the cushioning when, after what felt like an eternity, they stopped moving completely.

 _This is it_ , he thought.

The weird wire fence stretched to the left of the old police Ford, brushing against the side of the road with a tarnished, gray-red gleam. There were no signs indicating what it was from or to whom it belonged, but it was the only fence they’d seen so far that even tangentially matched the vague description the boys had given them.

“The fence. We found it,” Marcus said once he’d caught his breath, hoping Byrne wouldn’t think his reaction was because of Abby. Truthfully, he had no problem with Abby Griffin, or anything that had happened in their past. She was who she was: a big city doctor who’d moved back to a small town to abandon a former version of herself and all the memories associated with her. She was who she was, and he was who he was, and the gossips at the police station would do best to drop whatever scraps of high school trivia they’d picked up from old newspaper clippings or friends.

They were who they were, he and Abby, but they weren’t who they’d once been.

And that, at the end of the day, was what mattered. That was what made a difference. Not the resemblance they still bore to the girl and the boy who’d grown up in Arkadia together, but the stark, harsh, insurmountable differences that had shaped them since. Their pasts, no matter how intertwined they were, were just that: their pasts.

“Good eye, sir,” Byrne said, starting the car moving again at a snail’s pace.

The previous topic of conversation did not resume, and for that, Marcus was grateful.

“Let’s get out up here,” Marcus said after no more than a minute of driving, pointing to a crack in the road as a landmark. “Jasper said he didn’t think Clarke could hear him, but we don’t want to go too far.”

Byrne nodded, and pulled the car off to the side of the road. It took them only a moment to collect their things – Marcus put his hat, which he had removed and placed on the dash, back on his head, while Byrne shut off the car. They got out into the rapidly-cooling afternoon, clouds darkening overhead, promising the last thunderstorm of the year for Arkadia. The air seemed thick, murky, and it seemed to require greater effort than usual to breathe it in. It stirred the few crisp leaves that refused to let go of their tree branches, and the contrast between the gray sky and the soil-brown leaves made them appear almost black as they stretched toward the impending storm.

“What are we looking for, sir?” Byrne asked, appearing at his side as they regarded the expanse of the woods.

“Anything,” Marcus said. “Anything that might lead us to Clarke Griffin.”


End file.
